The morning was spent driving an hour to the outskirts of hell. My wife taught a course one of her friends arranged, but had the instructor bail on at the last minute.

While she taught, me and the munchkin hung out at a park for an hour. She gleefully watched a boy one month her junior play with her bubbles and chalk while she ate string cheese.

We then went to Trader Joe's to kill time/buy more "pouches" (applesauce in a squeeze tube), only to discover the TJ's in Outer Hell is next to a Petco. So we spent another half hour looking at kitties and doggies and fishies. She spent the most amount of time observing a tank full of my favorite fish, although this is likely because their tank was full of sparkly fake jewels.

We then returned to pick up my wife, eat Cuban food and pick the brain of her friend, who has opened two birth centers. She proceeded to offer us about six figures in equity so that gives us options. But yeah. Spent about two hours of my Valentine's talking about architecture and business shit.

Drove home just in time for the babysitter to show up, at which point we drove to my favorite Russian spa in Los Angeles (AKA the only Russian spa in Los Angeles) (not least of which because it's in a former crematorium - the oven in the wet banya is legit for burning corpses). We had a couples massage, which is awesome, except it's LA, which will certify anybody for massage in like a week, so you pay $150/hr for a $40/hr massage. Then we asked for the meat and cheese plate, which was $26 for literally a costco tray of jack cheese cubes, a handful of Ritz crackers and some sopressata. Place is really going downhill, man. And, of course, it was full of starfucking ad agency flacks who were talking so much like parodies of LA starfucking ad agency flacks we had to suppress laughter. And people who were texting their friends from the hot tub, despite the (formerly) strict no-cellphone policy. And then you have that awkward moment where you see a celebrity, but aren't sure who they are, and they see you seeing, and then they freak out because they think you're going to make a scene, and then you realize there's a person freaking balls because you're looking at them for an extra half-second and you feel like an asshole and then you realize they're the asshole because fucking hell, you're just wondering where you know them from, and it's not like that time when you found yourself waiting at the cab station at Mozza with Heather Graham, and it's not like that time you spent a three hour flight across the aisle from Alyson Hannigan, it's just the skinny dude from The Office, and fuckin' A, you would expect somebody to look up quizically when you barge into a tomb-silent former crematorium where they're hanging out sweating with their wife on Valentine's Day.

And then it's midnight and you get out and you're on Santa Monica and the street is one long line of Uber Black and twits in their twenties paying too much for drinks involving muddling and you just spent $300 on two massages, some long soaks and truck stop food and your Honda looks mighty out-of-place amongst the late-model Range Rovers and other PretenseMobiles favored by those hitting SMBlvd on Valentine's Day and you realize that it is long since time to get the fuck out of this berg.